Eat Your Vegetables!

Once a mother always a mother... You'll always worry about your children - yes, even when your child is 30 years old and has two kids of her own. You will never fail to hand over whatever it is you're eating (and still wanting to eat) if you're child asks for it. And you will always nag your child about eating right - and eating vegetables.

I generally don't like eating vegetables. No, scratch that. I like vegetables except okra. I generally deplore Okra. I think it's a sick vegetable. It has mucus for god's sake! Who would like to eat a vegetable with mucus in it. And it has hairs. It's generally an icky veggie. I will not force it on anyone especially my children. If one day, Paige tells me she hates it, I'd nod my head and say, "Yes, I understand my child it's an icky vegetable with hair and mucus. Who would want to eat that?"

And then there's this other vegetable. They call it the parapagulong. I probably don't have the name right, but it's name ends with gulong - so, that's that.

Anyway, while eating our lunch earlier, I was feeding Paige while talking to Mamu who was sitting across the table from me eating her lunch as well. We had tinola for lunch. And I was making Paige eat her papaya. The tinola had the papaya and parapagulong mixed in it.

I was convincing Paige to eat the papaya, telling her she'd be prettier if she eats it. All the while, Mamu was nagging me to eat the parapagulong, "Ay ta magkakan ka baya nene kaini... Mamaray ang udo mo." (I think she has given up on me growing prettier if I eat my veggies, so it's basically about my bowels from here on. ☺)

Anyway while I was force-feeding Paige with Papaya, Mamu was dropping every piece of parapagulong on my plate. While Paige was complaining about the papaya, my face was all scrunched up, irritated with all the parapagulong on my plate, "Tama na ini Mama ha? Ini na lang.. ini na lang! Dai mo na po dagdagan!"

It was only then that I realized what was happening. Two generations of Mothers. It never changes. It's always about making your child eat her vegetables. I pointed it out to Mamu and we had a good laugh over it. ♥